Jenny's Revenge in Audio

Jenny's Revenge is now available in print, ebook, large print, and audio formats.

Joe Formichella reads Jenny's Revenge. Joe is a seasoned author, editor, and audio performance professional. Check out the audio sample below. He's a Hackney Literary Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee.

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Jenny Bolton has plans, and they don't bode well for Steve Dancy.

Married at 15 to a Nevada politician, Jenny suffered repeated assaults, witnessed her husband's ghastly murder, buried her mother-in-law, and killed a man. Dancy, who had once served as her paladin, rejected her without as much as a goodbye. Abandoned on a raw frontier, she's single-handedly building an empire that spans the state. Despite her triumphs, she feels she never should have been left alone.

Soon to marry, Steve is eager to begin a new life, unaware that Jenny is mad for revenge.

The Magnificent Seven Ride Again

I was never a fan of signing cowboys. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and lesser lights were too goody two-shoes for me. I categorize heroes as wholesome, flawed, and anti-heroes. In my mind, this is not three distinct categories, but a continuum, with Roy Rogers at one end and Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men on the other.

I’m not an enthusiast for either extreme. As a youngster, I preferred Wanted Dead or Alive and Paladin to the Lone Ranger. (I admit I watched Rin Tin Tin. You can’t get more wholesome than a boy and his dog.) Steve McQueen’s Josh Randall and Richard Boone’s Paladin engaged in gray professions and rejected many societal norms. Both characters were portrayed as generally good, but conflicted people who did the right thing in the end.

In the fifties, western films mostly pitted a good guy (and frequently a sidekick) against bad guys. In 1960, The Magnificent Seven broke this mold to start a trend toward far more complex protagonists.  There were not only seven “good guys,” they were flawed to the point of tipping into the anti-hero class. The Magnificent Seven was not the first western with anti-hero protagonists, but its enormous success triggered the Hollywood trait to copy what worked in the past. One of my favorites was the 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The complex, dark Tom Doniphon was one of John Wayne’s best roles, and James Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard certainly had reason for remorse. The Wild Bunch (1969), Silverado (1985), Young Guns (1988), and others employed crews of anti-heroes who seek redemption by righting wrongs.

The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges led the pack. In its original theatrical release, the box office exceeded more than double the cost of the film and it has been considered a genre classic ever since. Anchored by movie star Yul Brynner, the cast included television stars and solid character actors.  Many emerged from the film as bankable Hollywood properties. The taut script moved the story capably forward with character-driven dialogue and memorable scenes. A great director, a seminal cast, and an exceptional script. That’s all you need to make a Hollywood classic.

Antoine Fuqua directed the remake. Hit or miss? Remaking a box office success seems safe, but taking another turn at a classic carries its own set of risks. Most remakes fall short because the audience already has a preset image of the story and deviations can be jarring. Why would a studio invest 9 figures on a risky venture? Who cares about a new Magnificent Seven? Evidently a lot of people. The teaser below has over 7.5 million views. That number fills a lot of multiplexes.

Some have expressed concerns about this version's adherence to the politically correct. That’s not my concern. I’m disappointed in the overreliance on pyrotechnics. The current Hollywood disease is mind-numbing computer-generated imagery that overwhelms the story. Fuqua's take on this classic didn't avoid this pitfall.

By the way, my favorite piece of trivia from the original film has to do with a little tension on the set between Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. McQueen kept upstaging Brynner, so Brynner supposedly told McQueen that if he did it one more time, he would remove his hat. It must have worked because Brynner is never seen without his black hat firmly snugged down on his bald head.

Wells Fargo 1880 Rules for Stagecoach Passengers ... And a Few of My Own

Still From John Ford's Stagecoach

In the Old West, stage travel took patience and stamina. Wells Fargo published a set of rules for passengers meant to make an unpleasant experience at least tolerable. Deadwood Magazine suggests these same rules might make modern travel more civil.

1. Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink, share the bottle. To do otherwise makes you appear selfish and unneighborly.
2. If ladies are present, gentlemen are urged to forego smoking cigars and pipes as the odor of same is repugnant to the Gentle Sex. Chewing tobacco is permitted but spit WITH the wind, not against it.
3. Gentlemen must refrain from the use of rough language in the presence of ladies and children.
4. Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort during cold weather. Hogging robes will not be tolerated and the offender will be made to ride with the driver.
5. Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result.
6. Firearms may be kept on your person for use in emergencies. Do not fire them for pleasure or shoot at wild animals as the sound riles the horses.
7. In the event of runaway horses, remain calm. Leaping from the coach in panic will leave you injured, at the mercy of the elements, hostile Indians and hungry coyotes.
8. Forbidden topics of discussion are stagecoach robberies and Indian uprisings.
9. Gents guilty of unchivalrous behavior toward lady passengers will be put off the stage. It’s a long walk back. A word to the wise is sufficient.

In the interest of travelers everywhere, here are a few rules of my own:

1. Play nice with the flight attendants—the rest of us want them in a good mood
2. Use drugs and liquor lightly … or so heavily you pass out and leave others alone
3. Turn off game sounds
4. If you’re going to hog overhead storage, at least don’t wear a put-upon expression
5. Armrests are community property—remember what you learned in kindergarten
6. If you can’t remember the last time you bathed, it was too long ago
7. Drop the F-word and add please and thank you to your vocabulary
8. Air travel is not a nesting opportunity—resist the urge to haul along heaps of stuff
9. Forget Mr. Rogers—you really aren’t special

Now that I’m on the subject, I’ll tell you about my most memorable airplane incident. I was stuck in a middle seat, which always makes me cranky. The man in the aisle seat came aboard and stowed his briefcase in the overhead. Suddenly, the woman in the window seat shoved me and ordered me to let her out. Before I could move, the woman yelled at the man that he had laid his briefcase on top of her fur coat. He appeared startled at her assault but politely said she couldn’t take up the whole bin by laying her coat length ways.  She immediately shoved me again and demanded to get out. I struggled to get into the aisle, but now the man blocked my exit. Yelling went back and forth and all I could think about was that I had to spend five hours crushed between two warring parties.

Just before the flight attendant worked her way to our row, the man yelled, “Lady, I can tell you what you can do with that fur. You can—”

“Don’t you say it,” she yelled back.

It looked like nothing could defuse the situation, and then a passenger about three rows back yelled, “Hey lady, the last time that fur was on an animal, it was laying in the dirt.”

The whole plane burst out in laughter. The chagrined woman retook her seat and never uttered another peep for the entire flight. I read in blissful silence.

Another Remake?—The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

My last posting was about Hollywood remaking The Magnificent Seven, one of my favorite western movies. No sooner did it go to press than I hear Paramount is remaking another one of my favorites, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This remake is still in the initial stages, so actual projection onto a silver screen remains iffy. (Boy, the digital world is making lots of stock phrases obsolete.)

The original 1962 film starred Jimmie Stewart and John Wayne, with Lee Marvin playing the heavy. Vera Miles, Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Woody Strode, Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef also had significant roles in this John Ford film. Hard to believe Paramount can afford to put together that level of cast today.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance had a huge influence on the Steve Dancy Tales. Ransom Stoddard and Steve Dancy are eastern educated city dwellers trying to survive a raw frontier, both stories make use of political subplots, and the movie and books present day to day life as a backdrop to the action. At bottom, the film and the Steve Dancy Tales are fish-out-of-water/buddy stories.

I hope this particular remake never gets a green light. The original is a true classic and a new production is sure to fall short. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a sophisticated, complex story, directed by a master, with a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Hollywood should quit trying to live off past glories and make new films that will be eagerly watched a half century from now.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

What makes a hero —Character or Activity?

Hondo by Louis L'Amour

In 1949, Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell studied myths and stories down through the ages and came up with twelves steps in a hero’s journey, starting with normalcy or status quo and ending right back at status quo. The Matthew Winkler animated video illustrates Campbell’s definition of the journey. Campbell made a brilliant set of observations about the striking similarities of heroic sagas told throughout time and in every culture. (Steve Dancy complies with Campbell's theoretical journey.)

Campbell also breaks some new ground in describing the universal need for heroes, albeit in a language foreign to mortals.

The first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i.e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what Jung called “the archetypal images.”

Say what?

The Hero With a Thousand Faces gives the impression that the journey itself makes the hero. It might be more accurate to say that anyone who prevails through all of the steps elevates himself or herself to heroic status. Most people retreat at Step One: Call to Adventure.

I believe heroism is more a question of character than events. Mark Twain agrees with me. He wrote:

“Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

Raymond Chandler also had a character-driven definition of a hero:

…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

Joseph Campbell is popular in academia, but perhaps it's possible to get a better description of a hero by asking one of those storytellers who have passed these tales down from one generation to the next.

FX’s Justified Lives on …

My favorite television program is Justified.  I don’t lament its demise because I watch TV programs on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I don’t need to be first on my block with an Apple watch, I don’t care about the Kardashians, and I never banter with co-workers. I’m retired and way past the age of needing to be hip, cool, with it, or whatever. (Thank goodness I write historical novels.)

Being out of fashion is liberating. I can wear clothes without an emblazoned logo, drive a 2000 model car, shun Instagram, and watch my favorite television shows whenever and however I want. My way is after the season’s over. I can binge-watch or spread them out, and I’m not even bothered with a need to fast-forward through commercials. Life is grand without a remote in hand.

All of this is to note that I’m in the middle of season 5.  So please, no spoilers.

Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, and a host of other fine actors, is a character-driven modern day western based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. I believe bad guys and gals make heroes heroic, and Justified has a bevy of really bad characters. Our hero has sidekicks of course, but basically, it’s Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens against this cast of misfits, hoodlums, and felonious masterminds. Good actors portraying interesting characters in a tightly written drama presented with masterful storytelling. Who could ask for more?

If you haven’t watched Justified, you should. Here are a few links to articles about the program. The first consolidates all the professional reviews of the final episode. I glanced at it, but quickly closed my browser window before I happened upon a spoiler.

Episode Review: Justified Series Finale by Jason Dietz at Metacritic

Trigger-Happy by Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker

What ‘Justified’ Reveals About Manhood by Rachel Lu at The Federalist

What ‘Justified’ Really Says About Modern Manhood And Westerns by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist

The Literary Genius Of ‘Justified’ by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist

John Daniel Davidson wrote some lines that seem apropos to Justified and westerns in general.

“an extended meditation on grand themes: the price of sin and violence, the ties of blood and kin, the difference between justice and vengeance.”

“the western is at heart about the tension between civilization and barbarism—and the interplay between the two.”

“Ford’s films, like the Greek epics from which they’re drawn, portray civilization as a fragile thing, always under threat and always in need of protection—a task that often falls to those willing to step outside of civilization and into a state of nature. Hence, heroes like Ethan.”

Escape from Death Valley

Death Valley is the hottest place on earth. The valley has amiable place names like Dead Man’s Pass, Funeral Mountain, Coffin Canyon, Hell’s Gate, Devil’s Hole, Suicide Pass, and my favorite—Dripping Blood Cliffs. This is rugged terrain. Or, as a local newspaper reported in 1907, "it has all the advantages of Hell without the inconveniences."

It’s even true that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, but the rangers are tired of cleaning up the mess and suggest tourists instead fry their eggs on the hood of their car.

Good thing for us that it’s January. The daytime temperature only reached the mid-seventies and nighttime required a sweatshirt, a large fire, and a beverage suitable for sipping. We had a great time and I learned quite a bit about the region.

Everyone loves the story of Walter Scott, known far and wide as Death Valley Scotty. Scotty was a flimflam man who despite being discover as a fraud, successfully ingratiated himself to his rich mark, a man named Albert Mussey Johnson. Johnson was so enthralled with the con man that he supported Scotty for the remainder of his long life. Scotty told great stories and entertained the Johnsons and their innumerable guests. Most people conclude that if you’re glib enough the world is your oyster. I took away a different lesson. As a cast member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Scotty knew the lure of Western mythos. Johnson, on the other hand, was a longtime wannabe cowboy. Scotty didn’t just tell stories, he delivered the Old West right into Johnson’s Death Valley parlor.

The whole episode reminded me of the western frontier's power of renewal. The chance to start a new life is the real reason tens of thousands abandoned their home for the Old West.  Here’s a quote from an Article I wrote a few years ago: Is the Mythology of the Old West Dead?

“The West, outer space, the future, or a make-believe land represents a new beginning in a fresh place away from home-the shrugging off of disappointments and a chance to start all over again. The romance and adventure of frontiers draws people desperate to escape the travails of their current existence. We've seen this in real life with the migrations to the New World and the Old West, but today many people satisfy this longing vicariously with fiction. If you're poor, your family makes you miserable, you've committed an act that offends society, or wanderlust has gripped you, then the adventure and limitless opportunity of a frontier beckons like a siren's call. Emigrating to a frontier means you get a do-over in a land with no rules, no fences, no referees.”

To me, this is the real lesson from Walter Scott and Albert Johnson. Johnson had been diagnosed to die young and had lived his life indoors accumulating wealth as a Chicago businessman. He loved the idea of a Wild West and Scotty delivered it for him. In addition, the dryness of Death Valley gave him a longer life and relief from his incessant pain. Of course, Johnson built his home—Scotty’s Castle—with all the citified luxuries of the early twentieth century. Scotty's Castle was both a mirage and oasis safely tucked away in a barren wilderness.

As John Wayne said, “The fascination that the Old West has will never die."

Was Annie Oakley the Real Katniss Everdeen?

Doing research for Jenny's Revenge, A Steve Dancy Tale, I had reason to read up on Annie Oakley. It struck me that she had a strong resemblance to the fictional Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games.

Katniss is an exceptional marksman with bow and arrow who honed her skill by hunting to feed her fatherless family. In fact, she was so good at hunting, she traded her excess kills for other essentials needed by her family to survive. At 16 years old, Katniss becomes a celebrated hero due her unprecedented display of skill in a national show. To add spice to the story, she has romantic relationships with another contestant and her hunting partner.

At age 8, Annie Oakley started shooting game to feed her fatherless family. She sold her excess kills to a grocery store, and her hunting was so prolific that by 15 years of age, she paid off the family mortgage. Oakley became the first female superstar, famed all over the world for her shooting exhibitions in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. At age 16, she married a fellow contestant in a shooting contest, and her husband performed with Oakley throughout her career.

In 1875 on Thanksgiving Day, Frank E. Butler placed a $100 bet that he could beat any local sharp shooter. Annie Oakley beat Butler on the twenty-fifth shot. Some trick shootists might have resented losing to a five foot tall, fifteen year old girl, but Butler invited Oakley to join his act and they were married a year later. (There is some doubt about the actual year, but I’m going with the famous quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”)

Oakley shot almost every gun known to nineteenth century man ... or woman. At ninety feet, she could hit a playing card set on edge, and then hit it repeatedly before it touched the ground. She hit dimes tossed in the air. She regularly shot the tip off a cigarette held between her husband’s lips. I’ve heard of never going to bed angry, but I bet this couple had a different motto.

I have never read that Suzanne Collins said Annie Oakley inspired Katniss, but as Mark Twain opined, truth is stranger than fiction.

Coming soon: Jenny's Revenge